How AI is helping Elizabethtown College reduce food waste

Aired; December 14th, 2023.

 

Eighty million tons of food is wasted in the United States each year. Over $444 billion in food is thrown away. Thirty-eight percent of all food in America is wasted. Twenty-two million pounds of food is wasted on college campuses.

Elizabethtown College in Lancaster County is the first in the country to use new technology that could possibly lead to less food being wasted.

It’s called KITRO and Etown’s General Manager of Food Services Austin Benner explained how it works on The Spark Thursday,”KITRO’s operation is based on real time data capture and collection. The technology involves a scale and a camera integrated into (where the waste is discarded). The scale and camera combination records the weight and visual data of discarded food items. This information is then processed by AI and categorized into what kind of waste it is allowing for a comprehensive understanding of what and how much food is being wasted.”

Benner said the data is sent to KITRO’s company in Switzerland for analysis.

KITRO went into service at Elizabethtown in October. Benner was asked if they’ve noticed any trends,”We’ve seen a couple of trends that have been interesting to say the least, as far as our busy service times, possibly students not having enough time to eat. We’ve seen trends in students that may be unsure of what we’re offering on our main dish of the meal period for lunch. So they will get backups that are staples at our all you can eat facility, like hamburgers and wraps. And they may try a new menu item that we’ve put out. And if they like that new menu item, we see those staples ending up in our waist can.”

Benner indicated KITRO should be able to provide data on the foods students are choose,”We’re hoping with the more data collection that we receive and the more time that we’re implementing these devices, we’re able to determine exactly what menu items are popular with students, what menu items are not popular. And based off that information in the future, we will be able to adjust our menus and create menus based on that data.”

Benner said right now the food item that is being thrown away most often is french fries.